23 July, 2007

Three major contemporary art exhibitions are taking place this summer - Documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale and Sculpture Projects in Munster. Hopes that these exhibitions would present a representative overview of contemporary art have not been fulfilled, however, as a glance in European newspaper shows. The question of what constitutes "good" art remains controversial.

Commenting on the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Richard Dorment, art critic for the British Daily Telegraph, called it "the single worst art exhibition I have ever seen anywhere, ever." Meanwhile his German colleague Thomas Wagner gave the same exhibition an enthusiastic review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 16 June 2007, saying "Documenta is making art accessible again."

A visitor contemplates "Love Songs: Multi-Story House” by Mary Kelly.

a Chinese woman applies makeup in her bedroom as part of the installation "Fairytale” at

Here you will find information and a selection of reviews of the three major exhibitions taking place in summer 2007 and of the Art Basel art fair. Also included are a number of viewpoints and analyses of contemporary art.

A Supermarket for Art or a School for Seeing?

Art critics take stock of the Venice Biennale, Documenta, Sculpture Projects and Art Basel. The newspapers either report on the rise of the major exhibitions or take them as an opportunity to reflect on the future of art. They analyse the growing impact of the market on art.

Three major contemporary art exhibitions are taking place this summer - Documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale and Sculpture Projects in Munster. Hopes that these exhibitions would present a representative overview of contemporary art have not been fulfilled, however, as a glance in European newspaper shows. The question of what constitutes "good" art remains controversial.

Commenting on the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Richard Dorment, art critic for the British Daily Telegraph, called it "the single worst art exhibition I have ever seen anywhere, ever." Meanwhile his German colleague Thomas Wagner gave the same exhibition an enthusiastic review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 16 June 2007, saying "Documenta is making art accessible again."

Documenta 12: Peter Friedl "The Zoo Story"Photo: AP

Seldom has an exhibition divided the opinions of critics worldwide to the extent that this year's Documenta has done. Yet Documenta, which takes place every five years in the German town of Kassel, claims to provide a sort of inventory of contemporary art. For 52 years now it has been one of the most important art exhibitions worldwide. "Where is art today? Where are we today?" the exhibition's founder, Kassel-based art professor Arnold Bode, asked when he inaugurated the first Documenta ten years after the Second World War ended. Finding answers to these questions no longer seems to be possible nowadays; art has become too complex.

The fact that two other major exhibitions opened at virtually the same time as Documenta prompted the British newspaper The Independent to declare this summer "Europe's super summer of art." Sculpture Projects opened in Munster, where every ten years since 1977 sculptures have gone on show at different locations in the city, and shortly before that the Venice Biennale

However, the number of people who now ascribe the leading role in defining the artistic canon to the market rather than to the major exhibitions and their curators is growing. Do art fairs like Art Basel, which opened shortly after the Biennale, Documenta and Sculpture Projects, provide a better overview?

Basel: commercial value as an art canon indicator

Commenting on the Art Basel exhibition in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps of 18 June 2007, Laurent Wolf noted a major shift: "The Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel used to be the only international exhibitions. The galleries operated in the local markets within which the collectors also moved. The artists and the major institutions still had the initiative." He pointed out that things are different nowadays – the art market has gone global.

Beat Wyss, an art history expert, went a step further. On 3 July 2007 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung he postulated the thesis that the art market is increasingly superseding the major exhibitions and that the latter have lost their canon-defining function: "People still describe Documenta as the major art show, but this is just the wishful thinking of the orthodox art world. With its five exhibition halls and 113 exhibiting artists it pales in comparison with Art Basel, where this year 300 galleries presented the works of 2000 artists – all the crème de la crème... This art fair has risen to become the new art canon indicator."

And on 12 June 2007 Rose-Marie Gropp wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Art Basel could "simply not afford to display the signs of fatigue that Venice is currently exhibiting; it wants to and must sell. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why it could end up becoming the counterpart to a destitute and decelerating exhibition business; all the exhibitors saved their best pieces to present them in Basel – precisely because of its great appeal. In Gropp's opinion, Art Basel is "the better Biennale."

Venice: worn-out artists

However, other European journalists attribute the "signs of fatigue" at Venice to the negative impact the market is having on the creative process.

After observing the luxury yachts in Venice, British art critic Charlotte Higgins noted in The Guardian of 28 June 2007: "Events such as the Venice Biennale have less and less to do with art, and more to do with the owners of those yachts." The glamour of the new art scene, she warns, "threatens to eclipse the slow and serious work that art is."

In his report on the Biennale for the French newspaper Libération, published on 11 June 2007, Vincent Noce comments: "Never before has contemporary art been traded at such huge sums." And in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 8 June 2007, Niklas Maak, who was unimpressed by the show in Venice, also argues that the booming art market is eating away at art's autonomy: "The problem is not, as it used to be, that there is too little interest, but rather that there is too much. Artists and curators can no longer produce enough works of art to keep up with the demand." The artists, he says, are "worn out from the countless exhibitions and biennials" and as a result are "serving up lukewarm imitations of what they used to produce."

Kassel: A counterweight to the market

Unlike the Biennale, Documenta 12 in Kassel is being touted by its curators, Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack, as a counterweight to the art market. This is one of the main reasons they didn't publish a list of artists until the exhibition opened – for participation in the exhibition automatically boosts an artist's commercial value in advance of the event. The European press is divided about whether and how this strategy of keeping the market at arm's length can actually pay off. Many art critics are asking whether Buergel and Noack's approach is in itself a virtue – or whether this is in fact the problem with the exhibition.

Guy Duyplat, for example, noted in the 19 June 2007 edition of the Libre Belgique that Buergel had deliberately adopted an "anti-marketing" approach, but pointed out that after the "sequins of Venice" the exhibition in Kassel resembled an "austere university of contemporary art." He called Documenta 12 "anti-spectacular."

In the French Figaro of 25 June 2007, Béatrice de Rochebouet also described the exhibition as a "summer academy for contemporary art." Yet she noted that the Documenta 12 had at least succeeded in breaking with market-driven expectations. Holger Liebs, on the other hand, described the exhibition as unconvincing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 16 June 2007: "All too often the show looks like the treasure chamber of a slightly eccentric private scholar... Disassociation from the art market is not in itself a merit."

Munster: the winner of the art summer

Of the three exhibitions, the Sculpture Projects exhibition in Munster is the one that has been least criticised so far. "This is an exquisite exhibition with carefully tentative, yet precise and clever pieces," Henrike Thomsen

The clear framework in Munster – it features only sculptures in public places – appears to have achieved what the other exhibitions have failed to provide: a clear overview of today's art.

Here, writes Niklas Maak in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung of 16 June 2007, you can really see how the concept of "public places" as well as the perception of what a sculpture is have changed since the first Sculpture Projects in 1977. Nicola Kuhn takes a similar view in the Tagesspiegel of 18 June 2007. In her opinion the clear winners of this year's art summer are the sculpture projects in Munster, which "in their long-term study seek answers to a specific question."

Where is art today?

It seems this kind of overview can only be achieved within a relatively small area of art, and doesn't work for major exhibitions. They lack a central theme and their answers to the question of the purpose and quality of contemporary art remain one-sided. The choice of artists polarises opinion, and at the same time there is a lack of consensus on the quality of the works of art.

Barbara Bastings even went as far as to suggest in the Swiss Tagesanzeiger of 16 June 2007 that Documenta was a "sham with Dadaistic leanings." Yet with astronomic sums being paid for works of art, the art market can hardly offer more certainty, and there's also the possibility that at some point the current "art frenzy," as Niklas Maak called it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of 14 January 2007, will die down. opened its doors to the public. This show also aims to provide an overview of international contemporary art. Founded in 1895 and modelled on the Paris World Fair of 1867, it comprises a central exhibition as well as individual pavilions for participating countries and takes place every two years. concluded in the tageszeitung of 16 June 2007. Writing for the Swiss paper Le Temps on 19 June 2007, Philippe Mathonet also found the sculptures impressive, unlike the Biennale or Documenta where he said the selected works were only aimed at "underpinning a theoretical position."

22 July, 2007

Darren Knight Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of sculptural works by Billy Apple, Mikala Dwyer, Rob McHaffie, Ricky Swallow and Ronnie van Hout. The exhibition runs from 24 July until 1 September 2007.

BILLY APPLE

Billy Apple was born Barrie Bates in Auckland, New Zealand in 1935. He studied at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1959 to 1962 where he was part of Britain’s pop generation. His name change to Billy Apple in 1962 was an art-branding exercise and he had the first solo pop art exhibition in the UK - Apple Sees Red: Live Stills 1963 (Gallery One, London).

In 1964 Billy Apple moved permanently to New York and became the bridge between the British and American pop art movements. Leo Castelli arranged for Paul Bianchini to show his work, which was curated into the seminal exhibition, American Supermarket 1964 by Ben Birillo, artist and partner in the Bianchini Gallery. This was a groundbreaking installation where art objects were presented using the display techniques of the modern supermarket, repositioning art in relation to the context of commodity culture. It included the great names of American pop art – Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Richard Artschwager, Robert Watts, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman and Billy Apple.

In 1969 Billy Apple opened the second artist-run alternative space in New York called Apple at 161 West 23rd St and was at the forefront of the emerging conceptual art movement. He exhibited regularly in the New York art scene (112 Greene St Gallery, Leo Castelli Gallery, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the New Museum) throughout his 26 years of residence there, having gained US citizenship in 1981. On his return to Auckland, New Zealand in 1990, Billy Apple continued to exhibit internationally as well as have works included in survey exhibitions (Tate Liverpool; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; Queens Museum, New York and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh).

The two Rainbow works in this exhibition date from Billy Apple’s second solo New York show, Neon Rainbows at the Bianchini Gallery, November 23 - December 14, 1965. Rainbows in neon, translucent acrylic and serigraphs on paper were exhibited in the Bianchini Gallery’s large internal space in a smart high rise on West 57th St. With no outside windows the only light in the space was produced by the neon rainbows installed on the floor. The additive effect of the neon rainbow colors produced a beautiful bright white light, which if refracted separated back into a rainbow spectrum - all the shadows in the gallery were rainbows.

The show hit the mark in New York. None of the pop artists were working with neon and Billy Apple had taken the rainbow, an icon of pop and electrified it to create white light and rainbow shadows. Robert Pincus-Witten wrote that Billy Apple’s rainbows are among the most beautiful that hover over the present scene (Artforum, February 1966) and components of it were curated into exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Ileana Sonnabend Gallery, Paris and the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

The translucent acrylic Rainbow here at Darren Knight Gallery is a unique work and the Day-Glo six-color serigraph is a genuine pop multiple. Their spectral vibrancy embody the spirit of 60s pop culture. – Mary Morrison

Billy Apple appears courtesy of Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington.

MIKALA DWYER

For this exhibition Mikala Dwyer will construct in the space a new sculptural work, “…a stack of transparent bundles of space.” This work will continue the artist’s interest in ‘empty sculptures’, which have formed an important part of Dwyer’s practice in recent years.

ROB MCHAFFIE

Rob McHaffie’s recent forays into sculpture are unsurprising considering the subject matter of much of his painting oeuvre. Considering portrait painting too problematic, McHaffie turned to sculpting abstracted human forms from plaster and porcelain to use as subjects for his paintings. Now these figures have been developed and have emerged from being the stars of his canvases to works in themselves. The sculpture in this exhibition exemplifies McHaffie’s interest in the loaded sentiment found in the accoutrements of everyday suburban life. Expressing D.I.Y. spirituality, the work must be cared for daily like some sort of votive as the flowers are refreshed in a form of idol, or perhaps idle, worship.

RICKY SWALLOW

The exhibition will present two new Ricky Swallow bronze sculptures, Last of the Unnatural Acts 2007 and John 'The Wolfking of LA' 2007. These sculptures see Ricky Swallow's interest in historical art and popular music brought together in an unlikely duet.

One half of the work consists of a cover version of St. Mary Magdalen by Donatello (c.1457) from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence. The other, inspired by the original version of the former and realized in the same, small scale, an interpretation of pop-star John Phillips, as photographed on Malibu beach for the sleeve of his album 'John the Wolfking of LA' (1970) . Phillips (the author of two of the more significant anthems of the late 1960s - 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)' and 'California Dreaming') was, at the time, writing and performing as a reluctant solo artist and descending into heroin addiction. The album's superficially optimistic music carries lyrics about heroin use, miscarriage and the breakdown of friendships and of his marriage and thus articulates an end of 'the 1960s'. In Swallow's sculpture the bedraggled Phillips, dressed in fur on a beach is paired with Mary Magdalen in ragged burlap. Giorgio Vasari wrote of Donatello's original depiction: 'She is portrayed as wasted away by her fastings and abstinence' (whilst Phillips suffers from over indulgence).

'The Last of the Unnatural Acts' is the first by Swallow to directly reference the Roman Catholic carvings that were the first sculptures that he experienced as a child. Both figures appear alone, desperate. Separated by 2,000 years, they remain apart, presented on separate plinths: fetishistic figures ready for somebody else's ritualistic worship - Extract from Robert Tufnell's text for Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin exhibition and catalogue, Ricky Swallow 10 May - 23 June 2007

Last of the Unnatural Acts 2007 was part of Ricky Swallow’s recent solo exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and will be included in his forthcoming solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Project Space, Vienna in November 2007.

RONNIE VAN HOUT

Ronnie van Hout will be exhibiting a new sculpture titled Failed Robot. A robot that failed to grow up is like looking back at a future that might have been.

In what could be seen as a reversal of the futuristic fascinations of early science fiction, van Hout’s work laments the passing of an age of unbounded imaginings of technological and human potential. Thus we are drawn to consider our relationship with technology in contemporary times, where the lightning speed of development fails to meet with expectations of what a consumer culture should be able to provide, and where romantic visions of robots in the future are notably absent.

For further information please contact Darren Knight Gallery. For images of artworks, and exhibition text by Chloé Wolifson, please refer to Gallery website at www.darrenknightgallery.com

During the last decades media art has grown to be the art of our time, though it hashardly arrived in our cultural institutions.The mainstream of art history has neglected developing adequate research toolsfor these contemporary art works, they are exhibited infrequently in museums, andthere are few collectors. Which practices and strategies in curating and documentingof media art do experts in the field suggest?

The discussion was moderated by Dr. Michael Freund, from Austrian leadingnewspaper “Der Standard”.

******************************************************************:: The DEPARTMENT FOR IMAGE SCIENCE at Danube University Krems is aninstitution for innovative research and teaching on the complete range of imageforms. The Department is situated in the Wachau, Austria - a UNESCO worldheritage site - in the Goettweig Monastery and is housed in a fourteenth centurycastle. It is the base of the public documentation platforms www.virtualart.at andwww.mediaarthistory.org .

******************************************************************Next Tele Lecture :We will be happy to welcome you live or via streaming forour Tele Lecture in November.Guest will be the media theorist Lev MANOVICH.******************************************************************

In the landscape of contemporary prints, Erik Desmazières' prints are remarkable for their unusual iconography, out of our era, capable of fascinating the person who can follow its meanders. Following the recent exhibition on the views of Paris at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, the 113 works selected by the Musée Jenisch cover some forty years of creation and focus on the places born from his imagination. Strange towns, exotic explorations, cabinets de curiosités -sort of antrum -filled with artificialia and naturalia and other labyrinthine libraries offer many other detours through the main references of Erik Desmazières' universe

Details that require to be read slowlyThe Print Cabinet of the canton, proud of its thirty prints by Erik Desmazières kept in its collections, has long nourished the thought of presenting to the public this work that brings together technical virtuosity and dream-like vision. The technique is very classical - the author confesses his admiration for Piranesi, John Martin, Monsù Desiderio as well as Callot - but Erik Desmazières' etchings, by the density of their details and the complexity of their architecture, require a slow reading as well as the concentration that the amateur of prints values so much. The printer likes to quote Flaubert: «By looking at something, it ends up becoming interesting ». His visions that at first seem realist soon take on something strange, in keeping with the tradition of vagaries, in which the topographic reality is combined with elements of fantasy, and mark this work with the seal of melancholy

Study the creative processBy combining his own work with those of public and private collections from the USA, France, Belgium and Switzerland, the Cabinet offers an itinerary through these imaginary worlds aiming on the one hand to better know this exceptional artist, on the margin of current currents, and on the other hand to reveal the slow creative process, inherent to the media of print itself. Not only do the works hung in the museum reveal a work made up of strata and sediments, both in the carvings made in the copper and the complicated spatial constructions or in the obsessive recurrence of certain themes. But the film called Le Paris d'Erik by Bertrand Renaudineau and Gérard Emmanuel da Silva follows the artist at work, showing his process from the preparatory sketch in pencil up to the final unveiling of the print by the printer, including the minutely detailed work on the copper plate.

The discovery of a work of art in seven phasesThe exhibition develops Erik Desmazières' imaginary world in seven chapters. The spatial complexity of his Villes (Cities) seems to come straight out of stories by Jules Verne. In his Batailles (Battles), that gather the heritage of Leonardo and Piranesi, he allows himself to destroy edifices reputed for being indestructible. His Explorations go out to discover new worlds, inhabited by gondolas, steamships, piers. Amazing and surprising things such as shells, crabs and fish heads people his Curiosités (Curiosities) while his Chambres des Merveilles (Rooms of Wonders) are muffled refuges, far from the madding crowd. The Bibliothèques (Libraries), in particular that of Babel, so dear to Borges, punctuate his work in a regular manner. Lastly, his Comédies (Comedies) describe with weird figures the faults of our contemporary brothers, in the same manner as Callot or Pietro Longhi.

From Sciences Po to etchingsBorn in Morocco in 1948, as the son of a diplomat, Erik Desmazières spent his childhood moving from one place to another, from the Atlas, to Portugal and to France. In 1971, he graduated from the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. In parallel he studied engraving in night courses given by the municipality of Paris. He grew interested in this medium through a work by Piranesi, a fascinating construction of space in black and white. As of 1972, he chose etchings and their inherent technical constraints, as his main means of expression. He quickly built a reputation among a circle of connoisseurs and was rewarded (he received the Grand Prix of the City of Paris in 1978). Erik Desmazières was supported by major print dealers, such as Arsène Bonafous-Murat in Paris, François Ditesheim in Neuchâtel, Andrew Fitch in New York and Christopher Mendez in London. His engraved work represents over 200 sheets, covering nearly forty years of activity. T hrough major exhibitions such as the one at the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam in 2004 and at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris in 2006, international renown has come to honour the work of one of the rare engravers to have always lived from his art.

20 July, 2007

The Promote Contemporary Craft website (promotecraft.com.au) hasrecently been launched after two years of development. This websiteprovides an entirely new promotional tool for craft practitioners,curators, gallery workers, retail outlets, hotel chains, architects andthe broader market place. promotecraft.com.au presents the work andexperiences of a wide range of Australian craft practitioners, offeringsearches by medium, artist or style and each practitioner is presentedacross four pages to include biographies, images of works, production,exhibition and teaching histories

The site has been designed by Stephen Goddard and built by MassiveInteractive, and developed in consultation with the contemporary craftsector and supported by Arts NSW. All practitioners are selected ontheir artistic merits, high technical skills, and quality professionalpractice.

19 July, 2007

The Minister for the Arts and Sport, Senator George Brandis, ... announced funding of $1,078,339 to support the development and touring of 17 cultural exhibitions, under the latest round of the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

Senator Brandis said these exhibitions showcase the diversity of Australia’s cultural life with contributions from Indigenous and textile artists, print and jewellery makers and photographers.

=================

Australian Capital TerritoryAustralian War Memorial

Focus: Photography and War 1945–2006

This photographic exhibition offers an overview of the historical and aesthetic richness of the Australian War Memorial's extensive collection of war photographs, through the images and experiences of 15 photographers working from 1945–2006. The exhibition concentrates on the work of still photographers, whose work goes beyond the mere recording of evidence and demonstrates a unique capacity to encapsulate both the subtlety and the complexity of an event in a single image.

The exhibition will tour to QLD, VIC , WA , SA, NSW and TAS.

Touring Funding : $103 297

Australian War Memorial

George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes

George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes will utilise small panel paintings, drawings and watercolours to outline Lambert's representation of significant landscapes whilst an official war artist in Palestine, Sinai and Gallipoli and how these connect to individual and national memories of war.

The exhibition will tour to QLD, VIC, WA, SA and NSW.

Touring Funding : $89 993

National Gallery of Australia

Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950

Marking the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia this exhibition documents the dynamic century of landscape painting from the colonial 1850s to the immediate period following World War II. Ocean to Outback reflects the great strengths of the National Collection and includes works taken from the permanent display, others restored and reframed in period style, a number of new acquisitions, and some works that have never been shown before.

The exhibition will tour to NSW, TAS, SA, VIC , WA , NT and ACT.

Touring Funding : $130 000

Western AustraliaFORM Contemporary Craft and Design Inc

Cross-Country: Canning Stock Route

This exhibition tells the story of Aboriginal and European interaction on the Canning Stock Route . Cross-Country: Canning Stock Route will date from Alfred Canning's mission to establish a well-watered passage through the desert, told through Aboriginal eyes and voices, through paintings, songs, artefacts, journals, alongside historical accounts and material collected by Canning and others. It also showcases artworks from some of Australia 's renowned Aboriginal artists and art centres.

Development Funding: $88 325

TasmaniaTasmanian Wood Design Collection Limited

Tidal Zone

Tidal Zone includes new works by members of the furniture designers association that explore the theme of the ‘tidal zone', the space between the land and sea. The designers included focused on this shifting space in which discarded, found and natural materials are collected and combined after the tide has washed away the previous landscape. The objects display new interpretations and unusual combinations of materials, and include recycled material and new functions for furniture.

The exhibition will tour to WA, SA, QLD, ACT, NSW, VIC and TAS.

Touring Funding : $80 700

Northern TerritoryArtback NT Arts Touring

ReCoil: Change and Exchange in Coiled Fibre Art

ReCoil: Change and Exchange in Coiled Fibre Art presents a range of woven forms by15 Indigenous and three non-Indigenous artists. The exhibition illustrates how coiling has altered the fibre practice of many Indigenous women and encouraging the emergence of fibre movements across remote Australia . The exhibition is culturally and historically significant and is the first to highlight the little known history of the practice of coiling and its increasing influence on contemporary art.

The exhibition will tour to NT, WA, SA, ACT and QLD.

Touring Funding : $70 555

South AustraliaSouth Australian Museum

Crayon to Acrylic

This exhibition centres on the largest Western Desert painting in existence—the Ngurrara canvas (8 x 10 metres), painted by senior traditional owners of the Great Sandy Desert of North Western Australia for presentation to the National Native Title Tribunal in 1997. The painting will be exhibited, supplemented by two bodies of work which reflect on it. One comprises a selection of paintings and film material, made during the painters' more recent visits to their ancestral land and the other comprises artefacts, crayon drawings and maps of the Great Sandy Desert country made by the painters' parental generation during a 1952 anthropological expedition.

Development Funding: $58 500

New South Walesd/Lux/MediaArts

Face to Face

Face to Face is an exhibition exploring new forms of portraiture that incorporate a variety of digital technologies from digital prints to single channel digital video and interactive installations. The exhibition will explore the notion of what constitutes the myriad faces of contemporary Australian identity, looking at ourselves and mirroring our curiosity about what is possible and what we may become as individuals in an era of rapid technological and social change.

Development Funding: $30 250

Lismore Regional Art Gallery

Life of the Land: John Olsen and William Robinson

Life of the Land: John Olsen and William Robinson is an exhibition of 30 paintings by two of Australia's most established and significant landscape painters, John Olsen and William Robinson, that affirm the experience and sensation of the Australian landscape. Both artists have developed distinctive visual languages in their explorations of the Australian landscape and environment. They are united by their searching and spiritual approach to landscape painting and their interest in aerial and inverted perspectives.

Development Funding: $43 000

Object—Australian Centre for Craft and Design

Marian Hosking: Jewellery

This exhibition, part of the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series, features the jewellery works of Marian Hosking, one of Australia's renowned crafts practitioners. The exhibition includes brooches, neckpieces and vessels using techniques such as silver casting, drilling and piercing which represent selected plants from three specific Australian environments: arid land, heath land and wet forest.

The exhibition will tour to NSW, VIC, WA, SA, QLD and TAS.

Touring Funding : $32 420

Parramatta Heritage Centre

Women Transported: Life in Australian Female Factories and the Convict System

Women Transported: Life in Australian Female Factories and the Convict System is a social history exhibition which will focus on life in Australian female factories and the convict system during colonial times told from the perspective of women themselves. Objects in the exhibition will be drawn from numerous Australian collections.

Development Funding: $49 100

QueenslandBrisbane Multicultural Arts Centre

TAPA Polynesian and Melanesian Bark Cloth in Queensland

TAPA Polynesian and Melanesian Bark Cloth in Queensland will showcase the diversity of Pacific Islander cultural practices and visual iconography through the medium of tapa (textiles). The exhibition will highlight a less known aspect of Pacific culture through visual/ textile material culture, in a living cultural context. Works have been sourced from the University of Queensland, Queensland Museum and private collections.

Development Funding: $49 000

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery

Aboriginal Art: Ken Hinds Cultural Heritage Collection

Aboriginal Art: Ken Hinds Cultural Heritage Collectionfeatures a selection of 200 Aboriginal works from the Ken Hinds collection that showcases four distinct areas or styles of Indigenous art including Western and Central Australian paintings, Arnhem Land barks, works in ochre from the Kimberley and Torres Strait Islands and naive and figurative works by a diverse range of Indigenous artists.

Development Funding: $31 800

Queensland Performing Arts Trust

Sir Robert Helpmann: A Celebration

Marking the centenary of the birth of Sir Robert Helpmann this exhibition brings together a selection of photographic and print material, costumes and related artefacts, personal memorabilia and video and audio recordings from diverse national collections to explore and celebrate the legacy of this significant Australian.

Development Funding: $56 750

Workshops Rail Museum

Great Railway Journeys of Australia

Great Railway Journeys of Australia is a social history exhibition focusing on the development of Australia's rail network and various notable railway journeys within Queensland and Australia from historical and contemporary perspectives. The exhibition celebrates the iconic status of the romance of rail and travel as a leisure pursuit and illustrates how train travel continues to be a key component of Australia's tourism industry.

The exhibition will tour to NSW, VIC, WA, SA and TAS.

Touring Funding : $70 225

VictoriaLa Trobe University Gallery

Clifton Pugh: Printmaker

Clifton Pugh: Printmaker is a major retrospective exhibition which will explore some of Pugh's most significant themes and also the historical and social context in which he produced his prints and their contemporary relevance. Some of his most significant themes to be explored include, Leda and the Swan (and his 'Australianised' version—Leda and the Emu), interpretations of the Australian landscape, native flora and fauna, and environment and conservationist concerns.

Development Funding: $10 430

NETS Victoria

Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987-2007

This survey exhibition from the Centre for Contemporary Photography introduces the photographic works of Anne Zahalka, one of Australia's pre-eminent photographers, as well as previously unseen portraits and newly commissioned works. Hall of Mirrors examines portraiture, representation and identity throughout Zahalka's celebrated career, which spans more than 20 years.

The exhibition "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 45 years of Art and Feminism" brings together 69 works of 45 artists from diferent countries who have initiated and/or continue to produce what has been referred to as "Feminist Art". The show includes, five documentary videos specifically produced by 3 artists, one collective and one theoritian with the aim to contextualize the feminist artistic practice with the social, political and theoretical feminist movements.

THE EXHIBITION

From the late 1960s on, feminism had a major impact on the visual arts, both as regards the praxis of some women artists and the production of texts and essays describing the awkward position of Western women artists and their works in the pages of art history. From the mid-seventies, a series of publications on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly demonstrated the androcentric bias running through the art history officially taught in schools and universities, while critically examining notions like "genius", "artist" and "art work". What’s more, by compiling the works of those women artists influenced by feminism’s technical and political tenets, some of these publications have put together a body of works referred to as "feminist art", now considered the last avant-garde movement of the 20th century and the one to have most radically transformed the worlds of art.

As a reaction to the tradition predominating in official art history, which tends to isolate works and artists from their social and political contexts, the exhibition will give visitors the chance to establish a link between art practices and the political, social and intellectual practices of feminism. With this aim in mind and considering that from the Illustration feminism comes dragging some central subjects, that still today look forward for a definitive solution, the show is arranged according to five themes central to the feminist movement:

1.-the struggle for civil and political rights of women;2.-the cultural construction of sex, gender and sexuality;3.-the struggle to liberate women's bodies;4.-the specific condemnation of violence against women;5.-the varied attempts to write a true history of the human species that does not exclude fifty per cent of the population.

Categorizing and grouping the artworks shown in this exhibition under "feminist art" is by no means an attempt to isolate them in some essentially non-art category or to separate them in some way from art history in general. In fact, it was feminism that actually redefined the terms of art in the late 20th century, by exposing everything from the cultural nature of gender to the politicization of the relationship between the public and private spheres and by exploring the nature of sexual difference or even by highlighting the specificity of bodies marked by gender, race, age and class. However, although we do not separate feminist art from art in general and it is true that the women artists situation has improved in the period analyzed, the fact is that women artists still face major prejudice and obstacles just because of their sex.

The title of the exhibition, KISS KISS BANG BANG, is conceived to highlight in a particularly graphic way the contradictions and misalignments between the stereotypes created about women in patriarchal cultures and the reality of a group that has fought unceasingly against such stereotypes. The point is to confront the traditional idea of femininity that sees women as the repose of the warrior, that objectivizes them sexually in culture (KISS KISS), with another reality of women as active, enterprising subjects tireless in the ongoing struggle to achieve status as first class citizens (BANG BANG).

Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, is one of the word's most important exhibitions of contemporary art. Documenta Kassel takes place every five years. Documenta was founded by artist and teacher Arnold Bode in 1955. The artistic director of documenta 12 is the exhibition organizer and curator Roger M. Buergel (born in Berlin in 1962).